Core Web Vitals: A Guide For SEO

Google has always been user-centric. From eliminating keyword stuffing to making page load time a ranking factor, to mobile-first ranking, they’ve constantly pushed for a better user experience. Core Web Vitals are yet another push in that direction. Read on to learn what Core Web Vitals are, why they matter, and how you can improve the associated scores for your web pages. By leveraging programming techniques and best practices, you can make tangible improvements to your Core Web Vitals scores and provide a smoother, more engaging user experience on your website.

What are Core Web Vitals?

Core Web Vitals are a set of specific factors that Google considers important in a webpage’s overall user experience. Largest contently paint, first input delay, and cumulative layout shift. In short, Core Web Vitals are a subset of factors that will be part of Google’s “page experience” score (basically, Google’s way of sizing up your page’s overall UX).

Why Should you Care about Core Web Vitals?

Visitors love fast sites(opens in a new tab) that are easy and pleasant to use, on any device, from any location. As we mentioned in the introduction, Core Web Vitals have become a ranking factor as of mid-June 2021. While we don’t expect to see a big shift right away and relevance remains much more important opens in a new tab, we expect its importance to grow over time.

Largest Contently Paint (LCP)

This metric is probably the easiest understood of these it measures how quickly you get the largest item drawn on the page which is probably the piece of content the user is interested in. This could be a banner image, a piece of text, or whatever. The fact that it’s the largest contently element on the page is a good indicator that it’s the most important piece.

Guide to Core Web Vitals for SEOs and Developers

Core Web Vitals, or just Web Vitals, are a new set of performance metrics that help highlight aspects of web page development that affect User Experience (UX) page loading, interactivity, and visual stability. Google is set to make Core Web Vitals ranking factors as part of the Page Experience Update some time in 2021. These metrics center on when certain events complete.

Google’s Seven Signals for Page Experience

According to Google, page experience is a set of signals that measure how users perceive the experience of interacting with a web page beyond its pure informational value. The idea behind page experience is to make your website the best it can be for users.

To make that happen, Google has shared seven search signals that you can focus on:

• Mobile friendliness
• Safe browsing
• HTTPS/SSL, or encryption
• Intrusive interstitials
• Largest Contently Paint (LCP)
• First Input Delay (FID)
• Cumulative Layout Shift (CLS)

New Ranking Factors: Core Web Vitals

Google has recently named three user experience metrics to become new search ranking factors. The metrics are designed to measure loading speed, interactivity, and visual stability, and are known jointly as Core Web Vitals. Together with mobile-friendliness, safety, security, and the lack of pop-ups, these new signals will be used to assess overall page experience and to cast a final vote in deciding whether a page is worth ranking.